Iranian plot to kill Saudi diplomat in Washington smacks of farce

EPA/Joe MarquetteA file picture dated 02 June 2004 shows Saudi Arabia's Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Crown Prince, Adel al-Jubeir, holding a news conference at the Saudi Embassy, in Washington, DC. The U.S. has accused Iran of orchestrating a plot to kill him.

The Iranian plot to whack a Saudi diplomat in downtown Washington is easily the most cockamamie caper in a cockamamie year. The casting of the assassination crew and how it would be staged is a Hollywood farce worthy of Billy Wilder at his zaniest.

The deed was to be done by killers recruited from — I kid you not — a Mexican drug gang. Why Mexican drug dealers? You know any armed-to-the-teeth thugs who can get in and out of this country so easily? See what I mean?

The hit was to take place in a Washington restaurant; the method, a bomb. Now, I’ve nothing against leveling one or two of those over-priced, lobbyist-supported Washington eateries. But it does seem a messy way to do the job.

Would raise an awful stink, for sure. Very poor public relations.

But it gets worse. If I’ve got the plot right, the Iranians decided they needed a middle man, a facilitator, preferably an Iranian-American immigrant living in Texas who was tight with thugs in Mexico and had a cousin high up in Iran’s Quds Force, its terrorism executive.

Admittedly, a lot to ask. But they found their man, one Mansour J. Arbabsiar, a failed used-car salesman. (Why does the villain so often have to be a used-car salesman?) In Arbabsiar’s case, not just any failed used-car salesman, but a serial bungler with piles of debt and a string of busted businesses behind him.

What a zany story, huh? As a movie, only the Marx brothers could do it justice.

But back to our saga. From this broad outline, you can understand why the plot was greeted with almost as much skepticism as relief. Many in the Obama White House and the various intelligence bureaucracies were loath to believe the Iranians, despite their taste for terrorism, would have been so clumsy or engaged a klutz like Arbabsiar.

Arbabsiar, now in federal custody, has been filling in the blanks. Skeptics cautioned he could be selling the feds a lemon. But as more details came to light, the Obama team concluded Arbabsiar’s story was the real McCoy.

There were FBI intercepts of phone calls between Arbabsiar and Iran and wire transfers of money — up to $1.5 million to finance the plot — from a bank account held by the Iranian Quds Force. Conviction set in that Iran was in on the scheme up to the top of its minarets.

The real questions became why would they risk it and how high up the Iranian leadership was the plan approved?

The "why" is easier to dope out. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’a Iran are in a knife fight for religious and political preeminence in the Muslim Middle East. Taking out the Saudi ambassador, especially in the U.S. capital, might seem a double-barrel coup to Tehran. How high up was it approved is a more difficult question.

U.S.intelligence about Iran is not the best. We’ve had no official contract with the place in over 30 years. Moreover, authority in the country appears split among three competing power centers.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard (including the Quds Force, a kind of special ops unit) is the regime’s military and internal security muscle and a major player in its economy. Experts say Quds zealots might have undertaken the plot on their own.

The elected leadership features President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a comic character so daft he insists the Holocaust never happened and George W. Bush planned the 9/11 attacks. He’s a bit of a joke even in Iran and hardly likely to have launched the plot on his own.

Then there’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Under Iranian law, Khamenei, the spiritual leader, is also the real political boss of what is a theocratic state. It seems unlikely so risky an operation could be undertaken without his okay.

But we don’t know for sure. Nor do we know for sure what response to make.

Some hawks in Congress — and the Israelis for certain — would like a U.S. military response, but our military plate is full to overflowing. And blockading Iranian oil shipments would drive up fuel costs, something a reeling global economy can’t handle. More sanctions — freezing Iranian bank accounts and the like — are about it.

Of course, we can always go to the U.N., which would complete the farce, wouldn’t it?